Everyone else must fail

By Karen Southwick

Subjects: Biography, Businesspeople, biography, Businessmen, United States, Computer software industry, History, Oracle Corporation

Description: "Karen Southwick's unauthorized account provides the full story of Larry Ellison's brilliant, controversial career. Ellison's drive and fierce ambition created Oracle out of the dust and built it into one of America's great technology companies, but his unpredictable management style keeps it constantly on the edge of both success and disaster. The hostile bid for PeopleSoft is just the most recent example. With one clever strategic move, Larry Ellison threw much of the business software field into play." "The saying "It's not enough that I succeed, everyone else must fail" has been so often used by or associated with Ellison that most people think it originated with him. It's actually attributed to Genghis Khan, but it's a dead-on way to describe not only the way Ellison thinks about competitors but the way he runs Oracle. His weapons are not marauding hordes, but Oracle's possession of database technology that is crucial for keeping mission-critical information flows working at thousands of organizations, corporations, nonprofits, and government agencies."--Jacket.